Sunday, November 6, 2016

CenturyLink agreed to sell its data centers and colocation business to funds advised by BC Partners, in a consortium including Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management, for $2.15 billion in cash. The data center portfolio includes approximately 195 megawatts of power across 2.6 million square feet of raised floor capacity. CenturyLink to retain hosting and cloud assets supporting network-first and hybrid-IT strategy

CenturyLink said it plans to use the net proceeds from this sale to partly fund its acquisition of Level 3 Communications announced on October 31, 2016. CenturyLink also noted that it will continue to offer colocation services as part of its product portfolio through its commercial relationships to be entered into at closing with the BC Partners/Medina-led consortium.

"After conducting a thorough review process, we are pleased to have reached an agreement with BC Partners," said Glen F. Post III, chief executive officer and president of CenturyLink. "We believe this transaction will benefit customers, employees and investors. Both CenturyLink and BC Partners have a strong customer focus and are committed to ensuring a seamless transition of the customers and their colocation environments."

Justin Bateman, a managing partner at BC Partners, said, "We are excited to be acquiring CenturyLink's portfolio of data center assets. CenturyLink has built and maintained an impressive global footprint of colocation data centers that is unparalleled for a portfolio of assets of this size. Led by Manny Medina and his management team at Medina Capital, these data centers will become part of a new, global secure infrastructure platform that will meet the growing and changing needs of customers today and for the future. We thank Glen Post and the entire team at CenturyLink for their partnership, and we look forward to working together to offer all the data centers' existing customers, as well as new customers, unrivaled datacenter and colocation services."

CenturyLink agreed to acquire Level 3 Communications in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $34 billion, including the assumption of debt. The deal combines CenturyLink's larger enterprise customer base with Level 3's global network footprint. The companies said this scale will enable further investment in the reach and speeds of its broadband infrastructure for small businesses and consumers. After close, CenturyLink's Glen Post...

BC Partners and Medina Capital agreed to acquire Brainspace Corporation, a privately-held machine learning and analytics company based in Addison, Texas.

Brainspace will become part of the new joint venture global cybersecurity company providing software, services and infrastructure. The joint venture includes a portfolio of 57 data centers to be acquired from CenturyLink, along with the acquisition of Medina Capital's portfolio of security and data analytics companies.

"In today's globally-connected, cloud-enabled world, there is a huge challenge and untapped value in being able to surface insights, answers, and threats in unstructured data. With exponential increases in the volume, velocity, and complexity of data, the challenge seems almost insurmountable," said Dave Copps, Chief Executive Officer at Brainspace. "Our products directly address this need through augmented intelligence. Brainspace Discovery 5 utilizes interactive data visualization as a sort of lingua franca connecting people with machine learning and radically improving their productivity. This new venture further validates our mission at Brainspace. With a global footprint of world-class data centers and cybersecurity expertise, Brainspace will be empowered to deliver machine learning, powerful user experiences, and next-generation investigative tools to an even larger number of enterprises and government agencies."

Sprint has become first to partner with Google to deploy the GSMA’s Universal Profile for Advanced Messaging. Sprint’s service is available via the Messenger app for Android devices developed by Google to subscribers using Android. In 2017, all new Android devices from Sprint will come pre-loaded with Messenger for Android.

The goal of Universal Profile for Advanced Messaging is to provide users with a common, consistent and globally interoperable service that includes features such as group chat, hi-res photo sharing and read receipts.

The GSMA said the profile has gained the backing of 58 global operators, OEMs and OS providers.

“We are delighted that Sprint has become the first operator to roll out the Universal Profile to their subscribers and hope that this will encourage other markets across the world to follow their lead,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA. “A single, open and common universal profile will help to drive the global adoption of RCS services, and make it easier for consumers to enjoy rich, consistent and interoperable messaging experiences regardless of device or network.”

Mellanox Technologies is launching an open source software initiative to enable advanced open networking platforms such as routers, load balancers, and firewalls based on its network processors.

The company is releasing an open SDK for its most advanced network processor unit (NPU), the NPS-400, which delivers programmable packet processing at 600 million packets per seconds.. The Mellanox OpenNPU is made available under either GPL or BSD license. The SDK for the NPS-400 packet processor includes open source driver software, APIs, control and data path libraries, and complete toolchain to program the NPS-400 network processor. In addition, the kit also provides reference applications for switching, routing and IPSec processing. The Accelerated Linux Virtual server (LVS) is provided as an example of how the OpenNPU can be used to provide significant hardware acceleration to the Linux kernel networking stack.

“The market for networking devices is undergoing a major paradigm shift, moving away from closed proprietary OEM network equipment and migrating towards open platforms that are both flexible and configurable,” said Dror Goldenberg, vice president software architecture, Mellanox Technologies. “We are in full support of this movement as evidenced by our initiative to open source the entire suite of Mellanox software for our NPS family of network processors.”

Mellanox Technologies has begun sampling its next generation, NPS-400 network processor, which is capable of performing advanced deep packet processing for security and telecommunications applications at over 800 Gbps.

The NPS features programmable CPU cores that are highly optimized for packet processing and leverage deep packet processing and applications experience, a traffic manager, hardware accelerators for security and DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) tailored for efficiency and performance, on-chip search engines including TCAM with scaling through algorithmic extension to external low-cost low-power DRAM memory and a multitude of network interfaces providing an aggregated bandwidth of 800-Gigabits per second including 10-, 40- and 100-Gigabit Ethernet, Interlaken and PCI Express interfaces. It offers C‑based programming, a standard toolset, support of the Linux operating system, large code space, and a run-to-completion or pipeline programming style. Mellanox supplies a library of source code for a variety of applications.

ZTE plans to use the NPS-400 for its new line cards design for carrier-grade router platforms.

“We are pleased that the NPS network processing unit is now available and shipping to communication technology leaders such as ZTE,” said Marc Sultzbaugh, senior vice president, Mellanox Technologies. “Through the acquisition of EZchip we’ve gained tremendous expertise and advanced network processing capabilities. The NPS is a sixth generation network processor and has evolved to provide unmatched performance and flexibility that meets the needs of the most advanced data center and communications customers.”

Comcast will begin delivering the Netflix service over its X1 platform. Netflix content will be fully integrated into Xfinity On Demand, enabling X1 customers to watch past and current seasons of shows.

“We are excited to add Netflix to X1 and give our customers access to all the content they love in a way that has never been done before,” said Neil Smit, Chief Executive Officer, Comcast Cable. “Netflix has been a terrific partner, and our incredible teams of engineers and designers have come together to create an experience that is not only seamless and intuitive, but also lets viewers search and watch tens of thousands of movies, shows, specials and documentaries with the sound of their voice."

“The Netflix integration into the X1 platform means our mutual customers will no longer need to change inputs or juggle remotes,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Now they can seamlessly move between the Netflix app and their cable service, enjoying all the TV shows and movies they love without hassle.”